


Robinsong

by GuardianLioness



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherhood, Discussion of canonical character death, Drastic Liberties with Canon, Gen, Magical Realism, Piades' Robin Spirit AU, Spirits, robins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-15 11:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16932417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianLioness/pseuds/GuardianLioness
Summary: Dick Grayson’s mother speaks of spirits. She speaks of their hunger, their want, their greed. She speaks of the lucky and the sad and how they are both blessed with the spirits’ presence.Her stories are cut short by the fall. Her son is left alone on the earth.Dick, however, is both sad and lucky.He doesn’t know if the singing that thrums in the back of his head is that of a spirit. He does know that it leads him to kindred souls. People that fit with him like puzzle pieces.





	1. The First Bird's Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades/gifts).



> This is my take on an AU the illustrious [piades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades/) has been plotting. I took it in a bit of a different direction and focused on some different moments in canon -- hopefully it's as fun to read as it was to write!
> 
> Merry Ficmas, Pi! You're a brilliant writer and a stellar friend. Thanks for letting me take a turn exploring the your excellent premise!

The night is hot and dry, the kind of night with clear, vast skies and wind that whistles through the caravan like a sweet, ghostly melody. It’s the kind of night that Dick’s native land does not have, not with its deep woodland, with its soft song, with the trees and their heavy shadow. It’s beautiful and strange, like new magic. 

His breath slips over cracked lips as he shifts. The pallet on the floor of the trailer is too warm against his skin, even though he’s long cast the sheets aside. It doesn’t look like the night will take pity and let him sleep.

The door, open on its frame, seems to acknowledge this, beckoning. He slides to his feet and pad towards it. If he can’t rest, he might as well soak in every heartbeat of the strange, sandy place.

Haly’s Circus will not be here long. Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after that, he and his mama and papa will pack. The lines and high wire will be taken down, rolled and stowed in the trunks in the back of the trailer. Pop Haly will whistle with both fingers, long, and loud, and shrill, and the caravan will roar to life, one trailer behind the other.

Motion. This life is motion and wandering, and now might be his only chance to drink in the jewel-light of the stars and listen to the hissing whisper of the breeze caressing the sand. 

He slips across the threshold to find mama sitting on the front stoop, a mug of tea wrapped in her fingers. She hums as he picks his way around the wooden steps and perch on the corner by the railing. "Hello, my little bird," she says, shifting to run her fingers through his hair. "Can't sleep?"

He shakes his head and she smiles. "You can feel it, can't you? The spirit's song."

"It does feel like singing," he says, tipping his head to one side. "Spirits?"

"There are spirits in this world, but you can't always tell when they're around. Here, though, here they are loud and strong. This is a wild place, a place where their power has not started to falter." She shifts, making more room next to her, and then she loops an arm around his shoulder, drawing him closer.

"Are they dangerous?"

She thinks a moment, dark eyes watching the slowly lightening horizon. "Are you dangerous?"

He blinks. "Well, Papa is always saying I am, but I think he means dangerous to myself. Do you mean dangerous to other people?"

"I mean both ways." She sets the near-empty cup down on the sand in front of him, and he watches, transfixed, as the wind-borne sand settles on the rim in a thin line. "Spirits are as humans in that way. They don't breathe air, like we do, but they need to fill their lungs, their hearts. If they don't, they will suffocate, starve."

"And they're dangerous because of what they need?" He picks at the crack in his lip as the idea rolls around in his head. 

"Just like humans. We lash out because we are hungry, or hurt, or because we've given in to greed or anger."

That makes sense. It fits with what he’s heard Aya say as she lights the candles in her tent in preparation for the visitors who watch them leap and weave and dive from the trapeze. She doesn't do tricks like Dick and his mama and papa. Instead, she entertains them with stories of the future and the past.

Aya won't tell him anything about his future or his past, no matter how much he begs.

"So why are they only in the wild places?" he says. "Why can't they move like we do? Don't they get bored of staying in the same place for so long?" 

Could he get bored of the gorgeous star-shine and the wide open land? He doesn’t think so, but his family has always been in motion. He wouldn't leave _them_ for anything.

"They are here because they are wild things," she says. "Spirits can be not-wild, they can be bound to places and items and people, but by their nature, they are wild things. This is their home. Their playground, their kingdom. And sometimes, if you are very, very lucky or very, very sad, they will let you hear them sing.”

“Which one are you, Mama? Lucky or sad?” 

He leans his head against her shoulder. Something twists, singing gently in his chest as he closes his  eyes and lets her comb her fingers through his hair again. 

"My little robin," she murmurs, her breath soft against his scalp. "Our strength, our love, our _family's_ love, will protect you. It will always make you strong. But you have to let it flourish. _You_ have to love. Its strength will come back to you, returning tenfold whatever you give it."

He nods sleepily, curling against her shoulder. Of course he’ll love. He’ll always love. That's what the circus is, what his family is. It is love, and he will love it back, and never, ever be without.

 

~~~

 

He doesn’t belong on the ground. He belongs in the sky, perched on a wire, tangled in silk, or swinging from the trapeze. It's who he is, his inheritance. It's the gift given to his parents, and their parents, the gift that will pass from him to others. Graysons do not walk. They fly.

The moment that his feet leave the platform above the net, when he steps out into the open air, head tipped back to catch a glimpse of the red and yellow tent arching overhead — that is the moment that he is really, truly alive. The ground gives way. Gravity pulls. The world begins to sing, and his heart rises up to meet it, joy twisting and twining underneath his ribs.

Dangerous and lovely and free. That sky is his kingdom. His family's kingdom.

So when the safety net is rolled away for his parents' final act, he huffs in frustration and makes his way towards the pole in the center of the platform. He’s old enough to help, old enough to make the leap and catch. He do it a dozen times a day with the net below, and he never, never misses.

But even though the skill is well within his grasp, Mama and Papa have hardened their resolve. For one trick a night, the riskiest flight of every show, Dick is grounded. Caged, like the little bird his mama thinks he is.

Braced against the pole, his eyes trace the soft grain of the platform. Anything to avoid their beautiful flight, to distract from the way their souls sing to the world.

It's because he’s looking away that he misses the moment the wire snaps.

It strains musically, pulling with a sound like soft chimes, and then the tightly woven strands of metal break with a crack.

Whipping around, white knuckles tightening around the support, his head tips down just in time to see the panic on his mother's face. The sky loosens its grip on them. They collide with the dusty ground below.

His ears are ringing. The crowd waves and ripples. Mouths open to scream, but all Dick can hear is that his ears are _ringing_.

He staggers down the ladder, stumbles towards the center of the ring. Pop Haly is crouched beside his parents, but when he makes his vocal chords croak out something past the keening in his head, the man turns and tries to wave him away. No, no, he has to see them. He has to see Mama and Papa—

A piercing, deep pain blooms in his chest. It burns, spreading from the center outward, trickling down his ribs, flowing up into his shoulders, arms, hands. Burning, burning and then numbness, static-like, pricking at his fingertips.

The sawdust floor rises up to meet his knees. The cry in his ears grows louder.

A thick coat settles over him, soft and warm and heavy. A hand reaches out to steady his shoulder. The sharp thorn in his chest eases, and heat rises behind his eyes.

Gone. His family is gone. The sky has abandoned them. Has abandoned him.

The ringing in his head grows longer and louder. It sounds more like crying now. Like a choked song.

 

~~~

 

He learns later that the hand on his shoulder belongs to a man who has lost as much in the same, horrible way. Killed. Not because of a need or a noble cause. Killed because the murderers could not silence their _want_.

The thought makes a wave of nausea flip Dick’s stomach. He curls up in the back seat of the car with the tinted windows. Bruce won’t use any of the others in the garage, at least not until he’s had the glass panes treated to hide Dick’s face. Apparently, being helped by a rich man makes him interesting. An object to be studied, or worse, an object to be _marked_. 

A breath slips out as the twist and coil in his gut starts to ease. If it was greed that made the man in Crime Alley gun down Bruce’s parents, it was _stupid_ greed. He’d have gotten much more money just by asking for help.

Meeting with the social workers always brings the pictures to mind. The dark shadows of Crime Alley. The bright spotlights of the big-top tent. The never-changing color of blood. The images are cold. So, so cold.

Nothing is right. Nothing is ever right anymore. There’s a hollow in his ribs, wide and gaping and painful. It is like he needs an air that has ceased to exist.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder once again. It is warm. Steadying. Dick lets out a shaky breath, and the pressure in his chest loosens, but the soft, crying song remains. It hasn’t left his head since the fall.

 

~~~

 

Flying again helps. Leaping from one roof to the other, cape flaring out behind him, letting the wind comb through his hair the way his mother would if she were here. It helps, but doesn’t fix the hollow in in ribs.

Dressing in their colors is also closer to right. Ruby red, forest green, flecks of gold. And to their colors you’ve added black. Night black. Bruce’s black. 

Dick slips from a perch alongside a drainpipe and edges across a thin ledge that juts out from the old and worn building. The grapple at his belt is starting to feel familiar and worn, the way the trapeze felt. It isn’t much harder to swing with one hand than two.

The gun fires, hook snagging on a low wall across the street. The night air beckons. Cape spread wide, he leaps. 

It’s a good night. No injuries, seven criminals stopped, and not a scratch on either of them. Even better than that, Dick put on a good show. One his parents could be proud of.

Batman seems to know it too. When Robin lands at his side and grins up at him, his scowl eases. He’s better like this. Out here, under the sky.

Maybe there’s something that he’s missing too. Maybe it’s the same as the hole in Robin’s red chest, the battered fluttering of wings just beneath his ribs.

He hopes it isn’t. He doesn’t want him to feel like that. But Dick doesn’t want to be alone with it, with the unending song.

Bruce chuffs, the closest he gets to a laugh underneath the cowl, and reaches out to ruffle Dick’s hair. He snorts, jabbing him with an elbow, and cartwheels away when B stops and lets the cape fall back over his shoulder.

It’s better. Not perfect. Sometimes not _good_ , but better. 

Because if Dick is alone with the wide, lonely hunger, the panicked beat of his heart, he’s air least not alone in the _world_. 

B draws his own grapple and inclines his head toward the horizon. A grin rising to Dick’s face, the boy follows, flying into the light.


	2. The False Robin Flies

Dick perches on the edge of the rooftop, feet kicking at the cold mist of the Bludhaven morning, when he hears the crunch of boots on the concrete. It's not Babs. She's quieter than that. And it's not _Batman_ either, because he would never condescend to visit Gotham's smaller, darker sister, even if Dick hadn't left the Manor empty. If Bruce did, he'd never make himself known in the process.

The escrima sticks are in Dick’s hands in an instant as he pushes to his feet. They're smooth and familiar in his grasp, worn down just enough to keep a perfect grip. As much a part of him as flight.

Security in his skill doesn't stop him from being cautious. He clings to the dark shadows, edging towards the corner of the wall, watching. Waiting. 

The culprit is not very good at staying hidden. A small figure, crouched and curled at the lip of the roof, clothed in what looks like a blanket. It scans the area with a twitchy, nervous tilt of the head. 

Dick creeps closer, and it becomes clear it’s a boy. A young one. Given how scrawny he is, it's reasonable to say he's 10, but the street-hungry hollow of his cheeks tells a different story. If he's not eating well, he's older. Probably closer to 13.

The bangs that fall just over his eyes are jet black, the unnatural kind of color that comes from a box. Dick squints, and the lenses in his mask focus in. There's a hint of orange-brown where the boy’s hair parts. Definitely dyed. Not unusual, if he's a runaway.

Loose gravel scrapes. The boy shifts to his feet, standing, and the blanket falls away, catching at a clasp around his neck. Not a blanket. A cape, like the one Dick used to wear, sliding aside to reveal bright, bright colors.

_His_ colors. 

The brat on the rooftop is wearing his colors. The soft green, like leaves. Black that seamlessly merges with the shadows. Pale gold, like dawn light. The red of his feathers, burning red that trails behind him as he soars.

Colors that only the Bat could have given him. 

A snarl on his lips, Dick stands, driving forward from the cover of darkness. The boy starts, stumbling back. There's a twinge of satisfaction at the momentary panic in his gesture, but in an instant, the kid’s collected himself again. 

"Who are you?" Dick growls, grip tightening on his weapons. Letting an opponent regain balance is unwise, and somehow, Dick have the patience to consider that fact, even though his vision is starting to haze over in crimson.

The boy's chin juts forward. His fists clench at his sides. The white lenses of his mask focus, unwavering. "Robin."

Dick’s jaw locks. A thrumming rhythm swims in his chest, pulsing. 

He is not Robin. Robin is Dick’s, even if it is not his name now. Robin is his mother's, his father’s. _His_.

On the boy’s unsteady, untrained frame, the colors are no longer vibrant. They are rot, decay, blood, infectious and oozing. He’s tarnishing them.

And then Dick hears it, piercing and clear. A single note hangs suspended in the air. A note that fits into the interlocking hum of the song that rings, like an unending dirge, in the back of his head.

As soon as the note peals out, his head clears. A child. The boy is a _child_. This is not on him. It is the Bat's fault. 

Through white-hot anger, Dick knows. Know that the boy is gaunt and hungry and small, ready to fight at a moment's notice. It’s easy to deduce what that means.

Gotham does not change.

"Get out of my city." 

Chasing him out is the closest Dick can come to kindness for someone who stole his identity.

The boy scoffs, folding his arms. “Don’t see your name on it,” he says, weight shifting.

As he moves, there’s a flash of new colors. A purple and green bruise, sunk deep into the flesh on his cheek. 

The Bat never hit Robin. Not on purpose. But Dick saw how angry he was before leaving. ”Did he do that?"

The kid lets out another huff and sneers. “No.” The quick jerk of his head is an eye-roll. Dick’s pulled that move often enough to recognize it, even past the whited out lenses. "He ever hit you?" 

The words pull from his mouth too quickly. The new note of fear in his voice is almost musical. Musical, like —

The second string of song.

It’s connected. The music…the music must belong to the false Robin.

"While sparring,” Dick says, straining to listen for more chiming notes.

The Bat never hurt him out of anger. By the time he started testing the boundaries, Dick was big enough that Bruce wouldn’t want to try. But as disgusting as the thought is, Dick’s not sure what would have happened if he was smaller.

"Oh." The tension in the Robin-boy’s body relaxes, but the twitching muscle at the corner of his mouth says that he's still coiled like a spring. And sure enough, there are more bouts of song. One after the other, loud and brash and loud, twisting with pressure. Anxiety, maybe?

"Where'd you come from?" Dick means for the words to come out as a hiss, loaded with the anger that's coursing through his veins like fire. Instead, it sounds snide. 

"Crime Alley," he shrugs. Dick already knew that, though, because the kid’s voice is thick with the drawl born, bred, and raised in the darkest heart of the city.

It isn't the only place with a voice for the low and devious. Bludhaven speech rings with the sound of scraping metal, the bitter taste of spoiled food. Dick’s own words are starting to come out colored with its tone.

"He find you on one of his pilgrimages?" One of Bruce’s constant, all-consuming pilgrimages to the place where a man and a woman, wealthy beyond any need or want, had fallen at the hands of a gunman. The place where a young boy decided to become a monster.

"Maybe," the Robin says, a hand flicking in a dismissive gesture. "Not sure why he was there. Coulda been a case. Coulda been he was bored. Coulda been one of those nights where he sneaks into the city and pretends to be a gargoyle. Or Atlas, standing there with the world on his shoulders even though no one's ever asked him to take it."

Atlas? It takes Dick aback, hearing the classical reference in the deep, sour accent of Crime Alley natives. What does he know about Atlas? About mythology and legend and war?

Regardless, he's got a good read on the Bat.

It's almost enough to make Dick crack a smirk.

"So why are you here?" he says with exasperation, giving up on the snarl. It doesn't suit him. He’s a bird. Not a beast.

"M'not useful to him. Not like this. I can’t fight right, and you're not an idiot, so you know it."

Useful. Even he spits the word out. Has he already started to see in Bru — in the _Bat_ — what drove Dick from his side in the first place? 

"He thinks I'm gonna fight like you. That I'll be there, and then gone."

A harsh laugh slips from Dick’s throat. "No one fights like me."

It's true. In a world of gods and demons, of enchanters and archers and lightning, no one can match his movements. He weaves, He dances. And the best part about it? The Bat never taught him any of it.

John and Mary Grayson were the ones to show him how to fly.

"Well," the kid says, his stance tightening. "I need to. They say the Bat is the smartest man alive, and maybe he is, but that doesn't mean jack when he's alone."

There's a chance the kid is right. The Bat was only around for a year before Robin became more than a nickname. Only one year — and Dick’s read the records. A year with more frustrations. More injuries. More near-misses. More unsolved cases.

"You're saying?"

"That he's gonna need Robin, whether you like it or not."

He stabbed Dick in the back. Waited till he was turned, and then drove a curved, black, bat-wing knife between his ribs. Then, he replaced him.

But if the way this kid landed on the roof, echoing for the entire street below to hear, is any indication of the _training_ the Bat’s chosen to give him, he’s gonna get his wings clipped before he’s even met Selina.

And the way that music is pulsing in his head, singing every bit of the kid’s intermingled confidence and fear, Dick can’t let that happen. False Robin or not, if Gotham wants another bird to fall, it’ll have to go through Nightwing first. 

“In two days. The roof of Bludhaven City Hall. Meet me at midnight, and I’ll teach you how to fly.”

~~~

The first night ends in a twisted ankle, skinned knees, and a bloody nose. Jason scrubs the trail of crimson from his face. Dick waits for him to say something, to excuse himself from the next flight across Bludhaven, but instead, his chin tips up and his arms cross his chest. 

“When are we going again?”

“When your ankle heals,” Dick says with the flick of a hand. “Until then, you’ll only slow me down.” He doesn’t say anything about the damage that performing tricks on a wounded leg can cause.

A week later, the new Robin’s still favoring his uninjured side, but when Dick turns back dismissively, the boy weaves beneath his arm to cut him off, fists clenched. “I can _handle_ it! How else am I supposed to learn?” 

“Fine. But if your ankle starts to give or gets worse, we’re getting in my car and I am driving you back to Gotham myself.” Reckless. The Bat has chosen to replace him with the definition of _reckless_. Bruce isn’t even accompanying a kid to _Bludhaven_ , which has a much higher non-villain crime rate than even Gotham’s Bowery or East End.

  
Jason does better the next night, leaving with only a scrape along his forearm from a soured roll. He’s a quick study. Quick and clever. The way his pale eyes shift from one corner of the roof to the other, scanning for enemies, the way he never quite lets his back face the street makes it obvious. He never had to learn the darkness of the streets. He was born into it. Is already aware of its tricks and can outwit every one.

The bile in Dick’s mouth that sent his pulse skyrocketing, the intense, burning anger at seeing Jason in his uniform — it’s fading. It’s fading and the song is getting stronger. It thrums in harmony with Dick’s own melody, weaving in and out in a loud, unrestrained roar.

  
Because He’s teaching, he thinks. He's teaching the kid to move, to take to the air like his family has for generations. 

Dick places a hand on his Robin’s shoulder after training one night, just as pink is beginning to stain the horizon. Robin freezes, like he’s thinking about twisting away, but then doesn’t. “I did good tonight, didn’t I, mini-boss?”

“Mini-boss?”  
  
“Yeah,” he snorts. “Batman’s the boss, and you’re the mini-boss.”

The Bat, the betrayer — 

No. No, Dick won’t ruin this. Under his tutelage, Robin doesn’t just fly. He soars. There’s a sweeping scale to his motions that, while bigger and less precise, carry him across alley gaps and rooftops with ease. He deserves to be able to enjoy that victory.

“Nah. Not mini-boss. Flight instructor.”

He laughs. Dick grins back as he pulls away, twitching so that the cape flicks out along his shoulders. The yellow lining glints in the new light framing him like a halo. Even through his sarcastic intonation, there’s something hopeful about the way he carries himself, the way he speaks.

The colors are definitely starting to suit him. 

He’s not Dick. He’ll never be Dick. But he _is_ a Robin.

~~~

_Jason_. The name twists, a thorn digging through the blue silhouette that runs across Dick’s chest. Jason, Jason, _Jason_. It cuts and cuts and cuts, sinking in, through his uniform, through his skin, until it’s root-deep in his heart. 

There’s no second song. Only an all-consuming hollow remains. One that Dick’s song alone cannot fill.

Dead. He’s dead. Dick’s fellow bird. The other person that carried his name. Dead. Dead and never coming back.

Nightwing curls up on the corner of the rooftop where he was standing when Babs’ voice crackled over the emergency comms. He can’t make it down the fire escape, much less leap to the street below. 

_Dead_.

He should know better than to invite someone into the sky that killed his parents.

 


	3. A New Voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay; I've got bronchitis and it's taking a lot out of me.

Dick slouches against the doorframe of his apartment, a hardened look on his face.

A boy stands in the hall, spine ramrod straight, his _inconspicuous_ clothes too polished and clean. Brand-name sneakers without the slightest age or wear. Hoodie strings that aren’t frayed. A hundred-dollar haircut mussed and disheveled. 

“Hi,” he says, shifting awkwardly on his feet. “Can I come in?”  
  
Dick’s eyes narrow. “Do I know you?” He doesn’t, but it’s sensible to ask the kid on the doorstep to explain why he’s here. The Bat did teach interrogation, but it makes Dick’s stomach turn to see pain and fear on the target’s face. It’s better to get information willingly.

“I know you.” The boy’s blue eyes, piercing, stare up with determined intensity. 

“Oh really? Through acquaintances?”  
  
“No.” The boy shuffles again, his shoulders taut. “I guess you could say I’m a fan. I admire your night life.”  
  
So there’s no chance he’s here for Officer Grayson. He’s even using the term Alfred has used for years. But he said that they share no friends, didn’t admit to knowing Bruce.

And if Bruce sent him, he would have admitted it. They’re on rough terms now, not bad ones. Anger, no matter how justified, pales in the death of family.

Dick’s heart still sings with the weight of it in a way Bruce’s never has. Jason, Jason, _Jason_. A brother. A twin bird.

“Do you?”  
  
The boy rocks up on tiptoe, like a frightened creature about to take flight, but he doesn’t move when the door rocks open.

“Come and tell me about it. I’m curious to know what you think.” And what he knows. The kid creeps across the threshold like a mouse slipping into a lion’s den.   
  
His gaze sweeps over the messy apartment, eyes lingering on the bowl of old milk by the sink, the empty packages on the countertops, and the half read reports on the table, but he jumps when Dick shuts the door behind him.

“Nightwing,” he breathes, voice taut. “You need to help. Batman — he’s not stable anymore.”

“Let me get this straight.” Dick’s arms fold across his chest. Maneuvering instinctively, he places himself between the boy and the door. The child is a flight risk. He can tell by the curl of his fingers and the hard line of his shoulders. “You’re telling me that Batman has lost it?”

“He hasn’t killed.” The kid says. “Not yet. But he’s close. So close. Two thugs comatose, and another six in the hospital. All in the last week.”  
  
“And you want me to stop him?”  
  
He looks up again, eyes awash with frustration and admiration at once. “You can stop him. Robin can. If he has you, if he has Robin, he’ll be fine.”

The hopeful tip of his chin, the desperation in his voice, it all sings another name. One that beats and flutters against Dick’s hollow ribs. Even though his black hair is natural, even though his accent is refined, like B’s. It’s in his movements, hesitant, flighty yet bold. Like another bird that Dick loved. Loves. 

“I can’t go back.” He really, really can’t. Can’t make his shoulders smaller, can’t curl his body, crush his blue-tone wings to slot into the role that a much younger spirit filled. The Bat does not want Dick for his Robin, and Dick does not want it either. That title, that strength, is Jason’s. “I can’t be Robin again like that. I’ve outgrown it.”

Outgrown the role, not the name, not the flight. He still branches from rooftop to rooftop, laughing and singing, trying to ignore that the song was stronger when there were two voices weaving it together. 

So, no, he won’t be Robin again. He won’t go back to Bruce’s side.

“I can’t go back to being Robin,” Dick repeats, and the expression on the kid’s face falls. “The Bat and I don’t get along. There’s…bad blood between us.”

The boy’s face shifts from despair to frustration to hardened focus in an instant. “But you can’t just leave this! Something has to be — “  
  
“Chill out, kid. I just said that I won’t go back to being Robin. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help.”

How could he? How could Dick abandon him when he cut Dick from the net, the _hell-hole_ that is juvenile hall? When he let him perch and preen in the light that shines through the manor windows, when he kept him safe in the Cave from the swords and the guns and the worse threat of sharp words and papers signing away his life to someone else?

He blinks, shocked, relieved.

“I won’t be Robin again, but we’ll find another way to fix this.”

“We?”  
  
“Of course,” Dick says, throwing an arm over his scrawny shoulders. “This is your quest, right?”  
  
The kid’s focused. He can see all the little details and connect them together. It’s incredible, for someone his age. He can’t fly. He doesn’t even have _wings_ , but his gaze is pointed up to the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Updates Sunday evenings, EST!


End file.
